The Monkey Who Fell from the Future

This boldly ambitious time-travel story certainly works hard for its readers but after a while also becomes rather hard work. Two eleven-year-olds almost accidentally find themselves in a British future four hundred years ahead. At the same time, another child from there plus a monkey are unwillingly transported back to Britain 2023. Both parties have therefore to cope not just with where they are but when. The 21st century children witness the widespread urban destruction caused by flooding after a meteorite’s landed in 2044.  But in an interesting twist, they see this is also in some ways a good time for children given that germs accompanying the meteorite went on to render most of the population infertile. Surviving children are more valued now, with the pre-teenage child transplanted from the future finding our own century too noisy and distracting.

Ross Welford is good at action-packed incidents, and there are plenty in this story. Yet his determination to explain the speculative science behind the theoretical possibilities of time travel sometimes runs away with him. These discussions take up a lot of time and still I would guess remain puzzling to all but budding young Einsteins. Some characters also speak in relentlessly mangled English, with an otherwise sympathetic French showman mispronouncing more words than he gets right. If the intention was comic it soon falls flat. Other young characters often omit first syllables, as in ‘citing or ‘cept, and this habit too outstays its welcome. An outsize villain plus a last-minute rescue effectively ups the tension. But the chance to go deeper into what the future can tell us about ourselves now is never really taken. Welford is a good enough writer to have made more of this than he has here.